a lot has happened in the Star Games recently, and we want to take this opportunity to shed some light on what is going on behind the scenes.

First of all, the games have been moved to more powerful hardware and received a software upgrade, which should increase and stabilize performance, especially on slower connections. Together with an operating system upgrade, we've enabled the options for TLS 1.3 and HTTP2 for all games, as well as some other server side features that the games will benefit from in the future. Through a new upgrade and maintenance procedure, we were able to keep the downtime for all of this to a minimum, and our monitoring shows positive results all across the board. We'll keep our eyes out for any issues on this front.

Next up, we've launched our Lobby feature in testing and will be completing it in the very near future. Additionally to having the option of creating more servers with different settings, we're also looking to create one or more Test servers where we can showcase features before releasing them on the production servers. Along with this, we've released a first batch of servers that slightly differ in game-play. We'll also add an option to select and save your default server to save you some time switching... soon.

We've also added a Coupon section to the games, where players are able to redeem coupons. Look out for free premium coupons on our social media channels in the future!

Next up, we're preparing for an Easter event. This event will be different from the Christmas event. Depending on feedback, other events will be implemented in the future.

We also released Fantasy Game (Android/iOS), the newest of the Star Games. This game is still in early stages, and we'll translate it to different languages. If you're interested in supporting us with translations, feel free to contact us.

Next up: Exploit fixes. With Version 3.1.0 and higher of the Star Games, we've fixed an exploit that a small group of people has been abusing to gain unfair advantages. While we look at "game-play features" very closely before deeming them exploits and monitor these over time, abuse of this specific exploit has grown out of hand to an extent where we were forced to change the system completely. If you see some players you suspected of "farming" (although they technically were not) dropping in ranks now, it's most likely because of this exploit fix. We'll now focus on and look at other questionable practices and look for permanent solutions to them. Stick with us. Please remember that bug abuse is a ban-able offense. We will further monitor the situation and look at the game balance changes this may have introduced, and depending on the results, correct and progress issues that arise.

Important: If you've been playing any of the Star Games normally, you will not be affected by the change described above.

As a next step, we will start to remove inactive accounts from the game when they are inactive for extended periods of time, and under a certain threshold. This will include removing them from your clan list. Our aim here is to condense the duel list to actual active players and worthwhile targets. Additionally, this is another step to prevent abuse by a small group of toxic players that prefer cheating over actual skill. We're closely watching the number of affected players and their respective clan size. We have a very clear numeric picture of what is going to happen and who will be affected to which degree by this change. We are currently looking into a way to notify you of such removals. We'll publish the details for each server once this is in place and activated.

Edit: As some people have contacted us with concerns, we want to clarify: In our current estimates, this will only affect accounts with a level of 10 or below and a very long extended time of inactivity (weeks). Most of these accounts were specifically generated by cheaters to increase clan size and will be removed. Aside from correcting long term cheated clan sizes, this will also bring growth of clans into alignment with future updates.

Of course, we have more plans coming up in the future, and with a little luck you'll be able to test these on our new Test server before we make them publicly available. Some of these plans may include more group content, and more diverse gameplay options to earn currency in the game.

These fixes notwithstanding, we will keep our options open to permanently ban accounts that break the rules or try to cheat the game.